


Flare

by sugarspuncoeurls



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 06:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8153050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarspuncoeurls/pseuds/sugarspuncoeurls
Summary: It’s one night. She’ll live centuries beyond it, still the sole ruler of this station if she hasn’t found a better venture, while this human, this one trigger-happy little human, will have disintegrated to dust before the next millennium.
And it has been a long time since she last danced.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A fic I never thought I'd actually get around to writing. Anyone else wish Aria had been a romance option? Sensuality, some angst, and mentions of drugs and alcohol because, ha, this is Omega. Enjoy!

_She’s back._

She watches from the second floor, hidden amid the shadows. Sometimes she’s surprised she still can; since this shitstain of a station became hers, it’s been nothing but limelight, a lightyear’s difference from the anonymity of a careless maiden seeking to put down her memories of ‘home’ like one puts down a diseased varren.

It feels good to be back, blending into the darkness again, just a svelte silhouette flashing once in neon light before vanishing. She can never truly disappear from Omega like she did from Thessia, but in moments like this, she _can_ demand a respite, a temporary moment to follow, to watch. To indulge.

She does. Poised against the balcony railing of one dark corner of Omega’s countless dark corners, Aria silently acknowledges the return of one who has to date been the _only_ one to rival the spotlight she commands.

She appears down below, usually flanked by at least two others and a half-dozen munitions. Nothing flanks her now but a small scrap of fabric knotted at her back, phosphorescent under the black lights. Safe, she must feel, to advertise herself like that; confident. On Omega, that’s synonymous with stupid – which is then synonymous with dead. For _her_ , though, not so much, and Aria has yet to decide if that makes the woman intriguing, or merely annoying.

She goes straight for the dance floor, slight, leather-clad hips already swaying to the rhythm, her toned body primed, like she might spring at any moment. _Small thing_ , Aria thinks for the umpteenth time, striped lips twitching with the beginnings of a smirk. It’s hardly relevant; unlike most of the primitive brutes on this station, she knows power, knows it doesn’t always come tall and muscle-bound and foul-mouthed. More often it comes unassuming, gazing from the depths of large eyes and speaking from a soft, thick-lipped mouth. Sometimes it comes smaller, compacted in thin arms and short legs, leanly muscled but no less effective when the pleasantries fall away and the battle begins. Sometimes it comes not with biotics – that, she never expected to believe – but with simple speed and flexibility, with the dodge of a shotgun’s blast and a retaliatory spray of bullets to the knee. A push forward, a leap, an armored elbow, and an omniblade to the neck, for an instant, beautiful kill.

Aria knows power. And despite the ridiculous moral code that may come with it, she knows this woman has it. Another reason she’s allowed herself to be here. _You have a **type**_ , she half sneers to herself, thinking of another long gone from Omega’s orbit, last she checked. It’s fitting; she can read the similarities between them, this woman and the previous, in the ways they’ve walked these bloody streets with the genuine belief that they could wash them cleaner. She doesn’t know whose Omega they were experiencing in those moments; fuck knows it wasn’t hers.

_And yet still, they…_

She’s drawing attention. Like gnats to a flickering bulb, like the weak-willed to those cardboard box-mounting prophets, the ‘commander’ is a flare, a beacon, an alarm, drawing interested eyes and Hallex-laced glasses to the pink and green and purple-lined black of her person. She’s blaring, begging for contact, closeness, and some are already making their way to where she’s settled right under her dancers’ platforms. Even _they_ have altered their routine a touch, shifted the sway and swing of their bodies to complement hers on the ground. They glance at each other with red-ringed smiles. Some good, (semi-) clean fun this soldier has brought into their midst. Just like the last times she was here, bracketed by those who couldn’t resist her pull.

Aria wonders, briefly, watching from these shadows, if she’s any different. Her smirk widens, slightly embittered at the remembrance of red markings on a white carapace. _It wouldn’t be the first time._

It’s been two hundred years since she last danced. Even longer since she found anyone good enough to dance _with_.

The commander, she’s good. And if sources prove, she won’t get the chance to show it for quite some time.

The pull comes again, invisible, powered by foolish idealism and the carefree shake of a small ass. Their eyes don’t meet, but like her, the commander knows when she’s being watched, targeted, pursued.

She bursts a laugh into the heavy, heated air, a flare shot into the atmosphere, seeking reciprocation. It comes, a few, several, a dozen leaving their beverages and buoys to join her, to catch a flickering lightbulb’s worth of her light. Omega has so little of its own.

Before she can second-guess, Aria flips over the railing and to the red-tinted floor. She might as well take an iota for herself, if only to remember what it feels like. As half the club shifts, acknowledges, parts for her entry into the fray, clear dark eyes find hers in the rosy glow of the holographic screen, and a wide, gap-toothed smile splits a familiar face in half. She answers with a smirk.

“Who’ve I pissed off this time?” she – Shepard – jokes, just barely heard over the bass. She doesn’t stop moving to speak, and when she abruptly spins, her arms signal what looks like a mnemonic. Aria half-expects warped blue to appear at her fingertips.

It’s close enough. More memories surface, of an assault rifle, bright eyes, and a dark-energy-laden hand. When Shepard slows, Aria is there, clasping her waist with two slender fingers, effortlessly angling her orbit, bringing her in, until she looks down – not up, like her recollections make her expect – into a face and a smile all wrong for Omega’s atmosphere, an atmosphere _she’s_ cultivated all her own.

“Oh,” Shepard says simply, as if it’s every day that the matriarch leaves her throne for another. It irks her to a degree, until she reminds herself.

It’s one night. She’ll live centuries beyond it, still the sole ruler of this station if she hasn’t found a better venture, while this human, this one trigger-happy little human, will have disintegrated to dust before the next millennium.

A shame, she almost thinks, as she brings their hips together. With the next pulse of red, the dance floor crowds, the music swells, and Shepard laughs, unabashed at the stares she – they – draw.

Aria smirks. Reckless and idealistic; such is her breed. She, Archangel, the one whose name she even now refuses to speak; all of them fools who think they can change this place, change its people.

She’d hate them, if she had the energy for it. Hate _her_ , if she didn’t find her so…

“You’re thinking too much.” Shepard looks up at her, her face striped in shadows, her teeth stained by the strobing holograph. She winks. “Not supposed to think when you dance, y’know. Kills it.”

“I’ve been dancing longer than you’ve been alive, Alliance,” she replies. A reminder of her dwindling freedom.

Shepard grins, undaunted. “Then you know what I’m talking about.” She leans up hard on her toes, fingers scattered along her hip, breath hot and hurried on Aria’s mouth, smelling of Afterlife’s weakest cocktail. Aria’s smirk widens.

“You’re fucking easy, Shepard.” Says it out loud because why not? This is her turf, it all is, and it’s not like the two of them would ever really manage to blend in.

Shepard’s eyes flash, flare, dark, wide and reflecting everything around her. “Prove it,” she says, and Aria briefly considers. She imagines pulsating hips and grasping hands, the sharp bite of teeth and a slick pink tongue down her throat. A night that’ll never be spoken of but for a few bawdy flirtations when next they meet – and they will. An encounter never to be forgotten until she’s the only one left to remember it.

It’s familiar. Too much so, and because of that, she backs away. “Not bad seeing you, Shepard,” she says. Not good – too many memories, too much familiarity, not enough potential for some mindless fucking – but not bad. Shepard has long since graduated from ‘bad’.

As she turns away, she eyes her balcony. She doesn’t have to look back to know Shepard’s still grinning, her gaze warm, light. Understanding, as if she’s someone who actually knows enough about _Aria_ to _be_ understanding.

She shakes her head.

It wouldn’t be the first time.


End file.
